Questions Arise on Dispersant Use in Oil Spill

NEW ORLEANS -- BP inched closer to permanently sealing the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico as environmental officials defended themselves Sunday against assertions they allowed the oil giant liberal use of chemical dispersants whose threat to sea life remains unknown.

The Coast Guard routinely approved BP requests to use thousands of gallons of chemicals per day to break up the oil, despite a federal directive to use the dispersant rarely, congressional investigators said.

Rep. Edward Markey released a letter Saturday that said instead of complying with the EPA restriction, "BP often carpet bombed the ocean with these chemicals and the Coast Guard allowed them to do it."

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Sunday that federal regulators did not ignore environmental guidelines. He says some field commanders had authority to allow more dispersants to be used on a case-by-case basis.

Before leaving on a boat tour of recovery efforts Sunday off Venice, Louisiana, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said the company had operated under a protocol agreed on by the Coast Guard and the federal government.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard ordered BP on May 24, more than a month after the spill began, to cut the use of chemical dispersants by 75 percent.

The Coast Guard approved 74 waivers over a 48-day period after the EPA order, according to documents reviewed by the investigators. Only in a few cases did the government scale back BP's request.

The EPA said in a statement that the company slashed its use by 72 percent through mid-July, when engineers placed a cap on the leaking well.

"While EPA may not have concurred with every individual waiver granted by the federal on-scene coordinator, the agency believes dispersant use has been an essential tool in mitigating this spill's impact, preventing millions of gallons of oil from doing even more damage to sensitive marshes, wetlands and beaches and the economy of the Gulf coast," the agency said in a statement.

A spokesman for the Coast Guard did not return calls seeking comment.

The chemical dispersant was effective at breaking up the oil into small droplets to be consumed more easily by bacteria, but experts say it can kill seafood eggs and larvae, with the long-term effects unknown. That environmental uncertainty has led to several spats between BP and the government over the use of dispersants on the surface and deep underwater when oil was spewing out of the well.

In humans, long-term exposure to dispersants can cause central nervous system problems or damage blood, kidneys or livers, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.

BP's apparently generous use of dispersants helps explain why so little oil has been spotted on the surface recently, said Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

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